Her Private Hell<\/em>, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (who is also known for directing The Neon Demon<\/em>), is\u2026 a movie<\/em> that\u2019s hard to describe.<\/em> This isn\u2019t due to any level of genius or nuance and it\u2019s certainly not because it’s the kind of movie that takes a watch or two to get.<\/em> No, Her Private Hell<\/em> is hard to describe because there is simply no substance, no point, and generally speaking, nothing good about this film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When going into writing and directing Her Private Hell<\/em>, Refn had been going for a kind of old-fashioned, Italian-horror look and feel to the whole thing. To his credit, Refn succeeded in that venture \u2013 the movie has this \u201cBlade Runner<\/em> meets The<\/em> Godfather\u201d<\/em> feel to it that\u2019s hard to do justice through written word \u2013 that is to say, this movie is very visually stunning and definitely nice to look at… but otherwise, there isn\u2019t much to talk about. Well, that\u2019s a lie; there\u2019s just not much good<\/em> to talk about.\u00a0 As I mentioned before, this movie tries very hard to discuss nuanced topics such as assault and human trafficking. It wants to be a movie that deals heavily in themes of self-respect and privilege, but because of the way that Refn chose to write the women in this film, that theme falls flat<\/em> on its face. Despite every instance of human suffering that the women in this movie face, they are beautiful. Despite every traumatic occurrence, despite every violent instance, not once do we ever see the women here depicted as anything other than desirable. Not once does the audience see a woman who is broken \u2013 not once are we shown a woman who is angered by the lack of autonomy she has in this world that the director created. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In showcasing this lack of nuance, the director paints a very clear picture of the misunderstanding he has towards what he thinks<\/em> female suffering looks like. According to his movie, he seems to see female suffering as this tantalizing topic \u2013 one that\u2019s beautiful and alluring \u2013 when the reality is that female suffering is exactly the same<\/em> as any other kind of suffering, and it should be treated as such. I\u2019m not the only person who watched this movie, though. Sure, everyone else in my row hated it, and the film was only actually in theaters for around a week, but there are a slew of individuals who genuinely enjoyed this movie. Personally, however, I find what user Aurore had to say far more interesting and accurate to the viewing experience: \u201cmale directors should stop watching porn right now.\u201d At best, Her Private Hell<\/em> comes off as shallow \u2013 at worst, it\u2019s just the director’s poorly disguised fetish. By Olyver LaGabed, Staff Writer In this world, there is good and there is bad. There are good days, bad days; good foods, bad foods; everything comes in pairs in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":6234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-6258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6275,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6258\/revisions\/6275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6258"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=6258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-17-01-00-Her-Private-Hell-2026-1200x548.png\")
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Believe me, dear reader, I\u2019m a journalist before I\u2019m anything else. I\u2019d love to write an overview of every good and bad aspect of this film. As a journalist, though, it is also my responsibility to be honest, and in all honesty, I\u2019m not even sure what the plot of this movie was trying to be. See, the issue with this movie is that it wanted to be both an in-depth exploration of what female suffering can look like in the world of human trafficking and a cheesy action movie centering around the success story of a man. In going for both of these wildly contradictory viewpoints, the film overshadows itself.\u00a0
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